Challenges and victories

By
Dana Larsen
on September 2, 2003

This summer has been a busy and challenging one for the team here at Cannabis Culture. Although we’ve had some great successes in our effort to change the legal situation in Canada, we’ve also had to come to grips with some challenging financial realities.
As we are based in Canada, the dropping US dollar on the international exchange market costs us a significant loss in real revenues from our American distributors. As a result, we have raised our cover price a little bit to help compensate for this loss. Our subscription rates have not changed, making this an even better deal for our long-term readers.

Financial reality has also forced us to cancel our 2004 Cannabis Calendar, which we had been advertising for release this fall. We will now have to delay this project until next year, but we assure you that our first calendar will be worth the long wait!

Our European-based German-language edition, Cannabis Kultur, is celebrating their one-year anniversary with issue #7 released in August. Although it has been an expensive and complex effort, with solid sales and an expanding ad base, it seems as if this European expansion is going to be a success.

On the homefront, major court decisions are steadily dismantling Canada’s cannabis prohibition. Desperate politicians and bureaucrats may attempt to fight the judicial system, but patients and activists continue to push the envelope.

Cannabis Culture publisher, Marc Emery, has been travelling across Canada on a “Summer of Legalization” tour, smoking pot at police stations in an effort to drive home the point that recent court rulings have made marijuana possession legal in Canada.

Emery has been arrested four times as of this writing, and more arrests are expected to follow as he continues his tour. Yet in some cities police have tacitly acknowledged that possession is legal by tolerating his smoke-in, and even in some of the jurisdictions where Emery was arrested it is not sure if they will actually lay charges against him.

So despite pressure from the US and the UN, Canadians may yet forge our own path regarding how we deal with this most important of plants. It is my hope that by our good example, Canada will help to lead our southern neighbor, and the world, into a new era of pot, peace and freedom.